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McAfee to Buy Cloud Security Service Firm Skyhigh Networks

Some eight months after being spun out by Intel, McAfee is now seeking to grow its cloud security service portfolio by announcing its acquisition of Skyhigh Networks for an undisclosed price.

The acquisition, which was unveiled Nov. 27, is part of McAfee's strategy of expanding its cybersecurity offerings to enterprise customers. Skyhigh's premier product, Skyhigh Security Cloud, provides a framework for enterprises to identify, control and protect data and user activities across any cloud on any device.

"Skyhigh Networks had the foresight five years ago to realize that cybersecurity for cloud environments could not be an impediment to, or afterthought of, cloud adoption," Chris Young, McAfee's CEO, said in a statement. "They pioneered an entirely new product category called cloud access security broker (CASB) that analysts describe as one of the fastest growing areas of information security investments of the last five years – where Skyhigh continues to innovate and lead."

That market niche will be important to McAfee, he continued. "Skyhigh's leadership in cloud security, combined with McAfee's security portfolio strength, will set the company apart in helping organizations operate freely and securely to reach their full potential."

By combining the products from both companies, customers will be able to use the tools from both to modernize their cybersecurity environments, and leverage the cloud security service from Skyhigh to protect their critical data, according to the companies.

Skyhigh Networks CEO Rajiv Gupta will join Young's leadership team at McAfee to run the combined company's new cloud business unit. For Skyhigh, the acquisition will help it gain global scale and integrations to McAfee's antivirus and IT security product line.

McAfee was spun out of Intel in April after being acquired by the chip giant in 2011 for $7.7 billion.

In a post on Skyhigh's website announcing the latest deal, Gupta wrote that his company's goals meld well with those of McAfee.

"We both want to create a world where enterprises can operate freely and securely to reach their full potential," he wrote. "As part of McAfee, we will have access to even greater resources to accelerate delivery of Skyhigh's product roadmap, further advancing our vision of making cloud the most secure environment for business. And combined with McAfee's endpoint security capabilities and operations center solutions with actionable threat intelligence, analytics and orchestration, we will be able to deliver a set of end-to-end security capabilities unique in the industry."